I wish to extend my condolances to all those of my brothers and sisters, human beings upon this earth, who have lost their loved ones or are in a state of confusion, sorrow and profound loss of composure, during the tragedy of the Tsunami in the Indian Sea, 26th December 2004.

Also, I would like all those whose faith are troubled by these recent gruesome events, to know that, whatever help is in it – I am with you and know what you are going through.

I was going to deliver a kind of meditation on how the ancient Gnostics would have approached the challenge of such events, but found it somewhat difficult.

Instead I thought I would share these sentiments given by

Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, in his Man, His True Nature & Ministry

Ch.1 Man, not outward nature, the True witness to Divinity

It must surely be to the glory of our species, and show the great wisdom

of Providence, that all the proofs taken in the order of this world are

so defective. For, if this world could have truely shown the Divinity,

God would have been satisfied with that witness, and have

had no need to create Man. In fact, Man was created merely because the

whole universe, notwithstanding all the grandeurs it displays to our

eyes, never could manifest the riches of Divinity.

A far different effect is produced by those great writers who,

in maintaining the existence of God, take Man himself for their

proof and the basis of their demonstrations: Man as he should be,

at least, if not as he is. Their evidences acquire force and fulness

and satisfy all our faculties at once. The evidence drawn from Man

is gentle in its effect, and seems to speak the language of our

own nature.

That which is drawn from the outside world, is cold and arid, and like

a language apart, which requires laborious study: besides, the more

peremptory and decisive this kind of evidence, the more it humbles

our antagonists, and disposes them to hate us.

That which is taken from the nature of Man, on the contrary, even

when it obtains a complete victory over the unbeliever, causes him

no _humiliation_, because it places him in a position to feel

and partake of all the dignity which belongs to his quality as Man.